What I did on my vacation…

Despite being away from my gaming library, other gamers and 90% of the gaming sites/discussion boards I frequent, I’ve managed to generate more content and a definitive programme of events for the next eight months than I would have done while at my desk at home. Definitely a case of relaxation being the key to focus. I now have a much better grasp of the temporal and financial realities that lie ahead.

In my initial plan for the period November 2006 – December 2007, I had predicated a production schedule of one personal and one painting service army per month with one completed project per quarter. This was an unrealistic target to attempt to reach from day one, particularly with the start of a new outside contract in November. It however is a reasonable goal to look to be attaining once I have been operating as Panzerschreck Design Studio for at least six months, but not while I’m getting things up and running. This has meant a rethinking of various dates as well which in turn has forced further re jigging.

One of the factors involved in this rethink of dates is that I ‘ve postponed my move to Australia by four months to November of 2007, after consultation with my partner and outlining a much more conservative budget. This allowed me to go over my plans for armies and set more conservative completion schedules as well as plan the budgets more efficiently. By delaying the completion deadlines by a month or so, I’ve freed up more time and budget to concentrate on the quality rather than quantity of production. Coupled with some revision of budgets for a couple of armies involving orders from overseas, this makes for far less pressure.

With the new job starting in 4 weeks, I’ll see a reduction in available time for modelling in both the personal and business areas from 65 hours per week to around 24 at best so some better project management was always going to be necessary. To help with debt reduction and free up some capital outside of work income, I’m further rationalising my boardgames collection by selling off some rare or valuable titles on eBay over the next four weeks. The proceeds from these will be split fairly evenly between Peter Pig and QRF/Quality Casting/Stronghold as I lay in some components for the next few months work while I can. It’s always more cost effective to make one or two big orders from the UK/US than lots of fiddly ones, particularly when postage from the UK can be such a problematic cost.

I think I’ll cut this entry short for now and update majorly upon my return to NZ on Tuesday.

Reviews of PBI and IABSM are a little way off still as the focus has been on future developments and planning than writing a quality brace of reviews.